Should Oglesby hire a city manager? Advocates make their case

About half of U.S. cities use city managers, and the concept isn’t new. It dates back to the turn of the 20th century and passed a key test when Galveston, Texas, used it to recover from a devastating hurricane.

Two consultants on government structure spelled out other such facts in a Wednesday program held by the Oglesby Plan Commission. Oglesby voters head to the polls April 1, and on the ballot is a question about whether to hire a city manager to oversee day-to-day operations.

Jason Grant, director of advocacy for the International City/County Management Association, cited a few advantages led by efficiency and savings.

“If you’re looking to reduce bureaucracy,” Grant said, “council-manager works better.”

Studies also have shown that council-manager cities are more likely to be solvent and enjoy greater efficiency. Corruption convictions are lower with that model as well.

“You are not giving up any power to the city manager,” Grant said. “You are giving authority to the city manager on how to manage these programs.”

Grant further noted that few municipalities move toward the commission form of government from other models.

“And there’s a reason: It costs a lot more money,” he said.

Duplication of services, he said, is only one of the problems common in a commission form of government.

Scot Wrighton, the past city manager of Streator and Decatur and now a senior adviser, said Streator adopted the form of government in 1986 after a series of problems and scandals. Wrighton served in that post for seven years and, decades later, returned for another four-year stint.

Wrighton singled out two issues tossed about in Oglesby. One is costs. Although a city manager necessarily requires a cost, it’s been Wrighton’s experience that the manager form “will more than pay for itself” in procuring grants and negotiating contracts.

The second issued floated in Oglesby, he observed, is conflict reduction.

“If there is bickering or dysfunction on the part of the governing body, does that mean the city manager form will eliminate all that?” Wrighton said. “No. If people are going to be difficult, they are going to be difficult.”

He added later, “But what I will say is, it serves to buffer.”

During a question-and-answer period, Amy Arthur relayed a question about whether a city manager would remove or void union contracts with city workers.

“A contract is a contract,” Wrighton said, “and we honor contracts.”

Angie Partridge asked whether a manager could be hired without a referendum. Wrighton said an administrator (distinct from a city manager) can be hired by ordinance – “It can be done, it has happened” – but that approach has ushered in legal problems because “what can be done by ordinance can be undone by ordinance.”

Jim Clinard disputed some of the advocates’ data and pointed out that they are advocates paid to talk up city managers.

The forthcoming question of whether to change to a council-manager structure has been a contentious one. Critics have said that hiring a city manager necessitates a salary that Oglesby can ill afford.

Jay Baxter, who helped advance the referendum, previously disputed that by using figures showing Oglesby would pay a city manager about $125,000 a year. His figure was based on city manager salaries in cities with populations less than 25,000, including nearby Streator and Princeton and, further downstate, Fairview Heights and Salem.

Grant arrived at a comparable range figure using a different calculation. Grant said a city manager’s salary runs from 1% to 3% of a city’s budget, and so he projected a salary in the $120,000 to $150,000 range based on comparable budgets in the Chicago metropolitan area.